While many Indian educational institutions’ ranking nosedived, the overall ranking has improved from last year in the latest list of 350 Asian varsities released by Times Higher Education (THE) on Tuesday. Phil Baty, editorial director of global rankings at the Times Higher Education said that it was a fantastic achievement that India now had 42 universities in the Asia rankings and that the country had improved on 12 of the 13 metrics underlying the rankings.

Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay despite of being the country’s best performers dropped two places to 29th and 44th due to a fall in scores. IIT Madras suffered the worst slump in the rankings. Its rank has gone down from 41st to 103rd position in the Asia University Rankings 2018.

This year two new entries from India made the country proud with the Indian School of Mines and the Banaras Hindu University debuting at the 141st position and 194th position respectively.

Baty said that while it did not experience the same rapid improvement as other East Asian nations such as China and while some of its institutions faced declines, India’s overall rise in the rankings proved that it could make advancements year on year. He added that in spite of many Indian institutions registering a decline, India was still among the leading countries in the sphere of higher education.

India’s superb performance is imputed to points earned in areas such as research productivity, even though it lags behind in research environment. Its only area of decline was teaching reputation, the rankings analysis discovered.

Baty said that the South Asian region has increased its representation in the 2018 ‘THE’ Asia University Rankings, but in the face of stiff competition from the East and South-East Asia it has struggled to maintain its standing.